Women left men out of the podium at FIM training camp in Brno

History was made on Wednesday at the FIM Road Racing Training Camp for women organised at the legendary Brno MotoGP circuit when for the first time women took all three places of the podium at the Bike Promotion´s open class race.

The FIM and its women´s commission CFM together with Bike Promotion and BMW Motorrad are currently holding a training camp for women in Brno, Czech. On the third day of the camp there was a race for the FIM camp participants alongside male riders from Bike Promotion track day. 16 competitors took part in the 600cc class but three women stood on the podium. Nadieh Schoots from Netherlands won the race, Jolanda van Westrenen also Dutch was second and Swiss Sabine Holbrook third. Best male rider finished fourth.

- I have trained both - Nadieh and Jolanda – they were also on our previous camps and I know they are fast so I was really pleased they were so strong in the race against the guys, former MotoGP rider and one of the camp instructors Jürgen Fuchs says.

The Brno training camp is now the third camp the FIM women´s commission has organised as part of its Road Racing project which aims to get more women into the sport and to help them improve their riding skills. Beside Fuchs there were other high level instructors including former MotoGP rider Simon Crafar, Sabine Holbrook, female Supersport 600 rider in the FIM European Alpe Adria Championship and Maria Costello MBE who held the Guinness World Record for being the fastest woman to lap the Isle of Man TT course for five years.

- We have 26 girls from 11 different countries here, we made history in mixed gender open race showing that many of the women on the camp are extremely strong competitors and it would be great to see more women competing at the highest level of Road Racing. And more importantly everyone is genuinely enjoying themselves over here, the director of FIM Women´s Commission Nita Korhonen says.

Also Bike Promotion and BMW Motorrad have been pleased to see the improvement in the level of the participants and to see the concrete meaning of the camps.

- Its huge pleasure to be part of these camps, the manager of technical development and assistance of BMW Motorrad Kurt Boeck says and continues:
- It´s now the third time we provide our S 1000 RR bikes for the participants and I am happy to see these camps have had such a big impact on the careers of many participants. Like Janine Davies from the first FIM camp, she liked the bike so much that when she got back home to South Africa she bought an S1000RR and became the first girl ever to podium on a BMW in the history of the South African SBK series. It would be interesting to see more females competing at women´s cup and maybe with BMWs, Boeck hints.